Contents

Usage

The left one can dock while the right is docked to the fuel tank.

Due to its large radius it provides a much more rigid connection than the small-sized Clamp-O-Tron Docking Port resulting in a lot less wobble. This makes it the preferred choice for docking very large and heavy vessels. Unlike the smaller docking ports, The Clamp-O-Tron Sr. cannot be mounted radially. Otherwise it is functionally identical to all other docking ports but much heavier.

Note that in order to dock two spacecrafts, both must be equipped with docking ports of equal size. When constructing a spacecraft, another part which is not a docking port can be placed on it. That part can then be undocked, but not redocked.

Compared with the other docking ports, it is not obvious which side is the active one. Only the active side can be attached to the active side of another docking port of the same size or detach any part connected to it. The active side has more detail and a ring slightly smaller than the usual diameter. The picture to the left shows which side which should face outside.

Product description

“

The Clamp-O-Tron Sr. is the result of intense and costly development to answer the problem of how to make docking connections more sturdy. Thanks to the brilliant suggestion of the staff janitor "why don't you make 'em bigger?", the public now can enjoy the sheer thrill of docking enormous objects in space.

”

Strength against pulling apart

The strength of docking ports is hard to determine. In real life the strength of a docking port is depended by many factors, basically if you are folding the connection or just pulling it. But who cares about real world here?

At a force of 100 kN a little gap between the docking ports is formed. The gap gets bigger with increasing force.

At a force of 1100 kN the docking ports are about a meter apart. Relating to a stress–strain curve this would be the elastic limit.

At 1120 kN (a little bit more than the thrust produced by the J-2 engine used in the Saturn V second and third stages) the parts move slowly apart. This makes the game think the ship is getting longer. This is why the camera - pointing always at the center of mass - moves. At a distance of about 70 meters the docking port is ripped apart (letting the camera flip back).

The force on a docking port within a space ship (e.g. when you are pulling something) is much smaller than your engine force because the part being pulled is going with you. To be on the safe side one can use as a rule of thumb that the port stress is the force applied by the mass of the part that is pulled.
More accurately it is the force of the part pulling minus the force of the part that is pulled.

Compatibility

The different sizes of Clamp-O-Tron ports (standard, Jr. and Sr.) will not connect to each other.